Our congregation is made up largely of people who live in the nearby homeless shelter. I bet many of them started coming because the soup kitchen we have opens at noon, and we serve coffee and turn the heat on early. Yet today, there was no lunch and nonetheless, there they all were. It was All Saints Day. I invited everyone to write the names of people who had been saints to them and we would add them to the prayers of the eucharist, right there during the canon of the mass. I read the names, surely misprounouncing or not quite able to read some of them: name after name, mothers, daughters, wives, heroes, helpers, blessed friends. All around us they stood, we all stood, silently aware of who was there with us. "Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts," we sang in the bluesy setting by Grayson Warren Brown, from A Mass for a Soulful People. Amen. Amen.
Thanks so much. This is one of my favorites.
ReplyDeleteOur congregation is made up largely of people who live in the nearby homeless shelter. I bet many of them started coming because the soup kitchen we have opens at noon, and we serve coffee and turn the heat on early.
ReplyDeleteYet today, there was no lunch and nonetheless, there they all were.
It was All Saints Day. I invited everyone to write the names of people who had been saints to them and we would add them to the prayers of the eucharist, right there during the canon of the mass.
I read the names, surely misprounouncing or not quite able to read some of them: name after name, mothers, daughters, wives, heroes, helpers, blessed friends. All around us they stood, we all stood, silently aware of who was there with us.
"Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts," we sang in the bluesy setting by Grayson Warren Brown, from A Mass for a Soulful People. Amen. Amen.